2017 Maps of Meaning 02: Marionettes & Individuals (Part 1)

So I am going to briefly review some of what I told you last time, and then I am going to walk through, as I mentioned, I am going to walk through the Disney movie film Pinocchio, and which I presume most of you have seen. How many of you have seen it? Yeah, OK, that's...so as I think I mentioned, that is something in of itself, right? I mean the fact that you have all seen it means that it's a production of cultural significance, and because it's such a strange artifact. That's one way of looking at it, it might be worth trying to take it apart to understand why it is, for example, that you even understand it.

And so, I offered you the proposition last week that we view the world essentially through a narrative lens. I believe that we view the world through a narrative lens because the fundamental problem that we have to solve as living creatures is how we should act in the world. And, that means how we should act to maintain ourselves, but also how we need to act in relationship to other people and in relationship to the broader world in order to maintain our self across time.

So that's a complicated problem, right? It's not just how you survive; it's how you survive now, and next week, and next month, and next year, and 50 years from now, and maybe your descendants as well! If the culture is going to stabilize, then not only you across all those time frames, but you and everyone else across all those time frames. It's a viciously difficult problem. And so, I would say that we have evolved mechanisms to solve that. I think that is self-evident in some sense because, for example, one of the mechanisms that animals have evolved to deal with the problem of social being, even if they are not particularly social animals, is the dominance hierarchy, right?

Or you could call it a hierarchy of authority or power. Because I think that considering human structures, social structures as mere power structures is a terrible mistake. It's a terrible oversimplification because power is no means the only... like force is what I mean. Force is not a stable way of solving the problem of how to live together across time. The question is what is the stable way of solving how to live together across time, and that really is part of the question that I am trying to answer, partly because it's a perennial problem, right? We face the problem of how to organize ourselves in small social units without undue conflict, and then we face the larger problem of how to organize ourselves into large social units without undue conflict.

And that conflict can be absolutely devastating, and frequently is so. So then I would also say that the first way of solving this problem isn't conscious, you see, not at all. And, you know, you may know, and you may not know that there are different forms of memory, right? Really, technically different forms of memory. So for example, there is short term working memory, which is the memory that you use to hold things like telephone numbers in your active imagination. It decays very rapidly. It's only 4 to 7 bits, which is why, well, it's why phone numbers are, were at least 7 digits long. You know, you can kind of manage that as a loop.

And then there is episodic memory, and that has two elements. One is semantic and the other is episodic. It's, what's the name of that? Mmm, someone said something... [Student] Procedural? Yes, well there is procedural memory and then there is another kind of memory that you use to represent your experiences to yourself. So let's say it is image laden, and the other one is semantic, and semantic is your memory for facts, and those are quite different.

So for example, procedural memory—that is how you ride a bike, that is how you play the piano, that's how you play jazz music if you are in a combo. It's the memory. It's a funny kind of memory because it is built right into you. I mean, so is the kind of memory that you use to represent your own life, but it is much more malleable in some sense. So, what that means is that in your procedures there is information that you don't know about; it's patterned information that you don't know about. Part of that is how to act, you know? Like when you walk into a social gathering, you don't really think through how you are going to act. You know how to act.

And if someone asks you exactly what it is that you are doing and why, you could formulate a story about it. But the probability that it’s the existence of that story that enabled you to act that way is zero, because you have to react way faster than that. And so, you know you have social knowledge built into your nervous system because you have practiced being a social being for a very long period of time. And of course, then that social being has been shaped forever, really. It's the right way of thinking about it.

Now, we know that animals organized themselves into hierarchies, and we will say of dominance, because it is more true the farther back you go in time, at least since the time of the crustaceans, you know, when we split from our common ancestor 300 million years ago. And so, and it's true for social animals and non-social animals. So even animals that don't live together in groups have to organize themselves into a hierarchy in the space they inhabit. Songbirds are a good example, and they have dominance disputes all the time. Partly that's, you can hear them having their little dominance disputes in the spring when they are singing because basically what they are singing is, "I am pretty damn healthy and I am ready to go! And if you are another bird like me, you had better steer clear of this tree!"

And, the dominance songbirds, you know, they don't live together. Crows are social but most songbirds aren't. The dominance songbirds get the best nest, and the best nest is the one that doesn't get rained on, it's not too windy, and it is close to food sources. And you know, so they have the healthiest chicks and they attract the best mates. And like it is really important where you are positioned in the hierarchy, even if you are not like a flock or a herd creature. Now, we are more like herd creatures so it's even more relevant to us. But there is just no escaping a hierarchical arrangement in social being, that is social being and it is evolutionarily ancient beyond conception.

So, 300 million years ago there weren't trees, you know? I mean, so the dominance hierarchy is older than trees, so that is really something to think about. And then, you know, when you are thinking about the reality that shaped us, say, from an evolutionary perspective, but also from a cultural perspective, what you have to understand is that the things that have shaped us most are the things that have been around the longest. And so you could say those are the most real things, and you can't even see some of them. It's not like you can come in here and, well, it's not exactly true you can't come in here and see the multiple dominance hierarchies that are at work.

You can, in a way, because the chairs are set up to face this way and I am facing that way and that gives you some clues about the social order here and you take the cues instantly, right? You come down, you sit in the chairs, you organize yourselves according to mutual expectation and that's part of your procedural knowledge about how to behave as a social creature. Now, that knowledge is really, really deep and a lot of it is coded in your behaviour now and in other people's behaviour as well. And that's, you know? That's the expectations you have of other people and of yourself, and a lot of those are implicit, right?

So, when we are interacting, there's a very large number of things that you just don't get to do, and you know that too, and you won't do them. And that way we can act as if we understand each other, even though we don't, because you are really complicated and I am really complicated and there are lots of situations where we might really be in conflict. But because we share a map of the culture, the cultural expectations, it makes part of our...it's built right into our perception. You will act out that set of expectations and so will I, and if neither of us can do that, even if one of us can't, we are going to stay... we are either going to immediately devolve into conflict or we are going to avoid each other like the plague. And that's exactly the right thing to do.

So, one of the really useful things to understand, and this took me a long time to formulate properly, you know, you hear the terror management theorists, for example, and they have this idea that your meaning representation, the story you tell about the world, regulates your death anxiety. It's something like that, but that is not right. I mean, it is close to right, and it is a smart idea. It came from Ernest Becker, by the way, who wrote a book called "The Denial of Death," which is actually quite a good book even though it is wrong. You know, sometimes a book can be very useful; it can be usefully wrong and Becker's book is usefully wrong because he thought that it's the internal representation of your belief system that regulates your anxiety and that anxiety is fundamentally, in the final analysis, anxiety about death.

It's like, well, OK, fine, it is a reasonable proposition, but that isn't how it works, you see. It isn't my beliefs that right now are regulating my emotion. It is the fact that I'm acting out those beliefs, which include implicit perceptions. I'm acting them out, and so are you. And so, what you're doing and what I expect, more accurately: what you're doing and what I want you to do and the way I want you to react to me, that's working! So it's the match between my belief system and the way that everyone else is acting that is regulating my emotions. It's not the belief system; it is mediated by the social culture.

And you see, if you understand this, then you understand more particularly why people are willing to fight to the bitter end to protect their culture. It's not a psychological structure that they are protecting; it's a psychological structure and sociological structure simultaneously. So the social contract is you have a set of expectations and I have a set of expectations; they are actually desires. They are not merely expectations because, as living creatures, we are desirous; we don't just expect. And so, you desire an outcome and I desire an outcome and we agree to act in accordance with that. That's the social contract. And so, people don't like having that disrupted.

Well, it isn't because it psychologically destabilizes them, although it does; it's because it actually destabilizes them, right? If all of a sudden we can't occupy the same specified domain of territory, it isn't only that we are thrown into psychological disarray, although we will be; it's that we will start fighting with each other, like, and that can kill you. It's no joke; it kills people a lot. Like, it can happen very easily that a cohesive social group can fragment along some fracture line of identity, let's say, and all hell breaks loose. And you know, that's what the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda, and those things can get out of control just so fast, it's just unbelievable. And so, that wasn't death anxiety; that was death. That's a whole different thing.

And that's the other thing that terror management people don't exactly get. It's like it isn't just that your culture and cultural beliefs protect you from anxiety, and say anxiety about death even, it's that they actually protect you from death! As well as protecting you from death anxiety. I mean, look, it's warm in here, it's cold outside. The fact that the culture is intact means that you are not outside freezing. That's a hell of a lot more fundamental in some sense than mere anxiety, although I am not trying to underplay the role of anxiety; that's a major issue. But there is something that is a lot more fundamental at stake than mere psychology.

So it’s the match between your map of the world and other people’s actions that regulate your emotions, and it regulates it completely. Because, you know, if someone in here starts acting seriously deranged, like brandishing a pistol, let's say, all of a sudden you would not be in the same place at all, not a bit. And so what would happen? Well, chaos would happen. And chaos isn't just that you would get anxious—that's not a good enough explanation. What would happen is a lot more complex than that.

In some sense, what happens is that your body, and it does this, it does this—what would happen is that you would react the same way that a rat reacts to a cat. It's exactly that. It’s exactly that. You would respond as if a terrible predator had emerged in your midst.

And so, what is that reaction? Well, it's not just anxiety because when you encounter a predator, anxiety isn't the only thing that is useful. That would just make you freeze; that could be the worst thing you could do—freeze! And well, you are a pretty easy target. So you have to be prepared for a lot broader range of responses than mere petrification, like how about a little aggression? That might be helpful, you don't know. It also might get you killed, but maybe you could take the guy down and maybe that's a good idea, you know. And maybe you have to run, so that's disinhibited as well.

And maybe you have to think really quickly and reflexively, so that happens. That’s actively disinhibited, I would say as well. It's like your whole being thrown into intense concentration on the moment, and you are burning up physiological resources like mad. And so what will happen after something like that, if you don't develop outright post-traumatic stress disorder, which some of you would, is that you'd, assuming that the situation was brought under control, you would walk out of here shaking with your heart rate at like 170. And it would take you like—well, it might take you the rest of your life, and maybe you would never recover, but you could bloody well be sure that it would take you the rest of the day—that’s for sure!

And so it's no joke when someone steps outside the confines of the social contract, right? And that is kind of...there is a philosopher named Hobbes who I suppose in some sense was a centrally conservative philosopher as opposed to Rousseau, who is kind of his exact opposite. Rousseau believed that people were basically good in their natural state, so he believed that nature was basically good and he believed that culture was what corrupted people. Hobbes believed exactly the opposite; he believed that in the state of nature, let’s say, every person was at every other person’s throat and the only thing that prevented continual chaos was the imposition of a collective agreement that would be the social contract that essentially governed how people would interact and that would keep that underlying chaos at bay.

And, you know, my contention is that Hobbes was correct and Rousseau was correct. And I think that if you add Rousseau and Hobbes together, you get a total picture of the world and that’s really, I think, the picture of the world that I am trying to relate to you. It’s both at once; it’s like, well, you can’t just attribute human malevolence and unpredictability to society, it’s a non-starter. It’s like, people built society, so all you are doing is pushing the problem back—it’s like where did it come from?

Well, the society, the society before? Well then, the one before that. It’s like, well you got to tangle up the individual in there at some point, right? Because people created society. And so, you can’t just blame human irrationality and malevolence on society. Well, and also, it’s ungrateful for God’s sake! It’s like society obviously also makes you peaceful. Part of the reason you are peaceful right now, all of you, is because, well, you are not that hungry. You are certainly not starving to death. You would be a very, very different person if you were starving right now, you know? Or if you were enraged or if you were panicking or if you were terrified because your future was radically uncertain.

I mean, you are not just any of those people right now. You're satiated! And I mean that technically, you're satisfied. None of your biological systems, except perhaps curiosity, which is a rather pleasant emotion, are activated in the least. And, you know, because of that, you all think that you are in control of yourself! But don’t be thinking that. That’s just not right! You mean, if you look at how the brain is structured. For example, the hypothalamus, which is a really important part of the brain, it basically establishes the framework of reference—the actions, the framework of reference within which—and the actions you take in order to fulfill basic biological needs.

So the hypothalamus makes you thirsty, and the hypothalamus makes you hungry, and it makes you sexually aroused, and it puts you into a state of defensive aggression, and it actually also makes you explore and be curious, and all of that's hypothalamic! It is an amazing structure. And then, and it's really small and it's right at the base of the brain, and you could imagine it as something that has tremendously powerful projections upward throughout the rest of the brain into the emotional systems and the cortical systems and all of that, like tree trunk-sized connections, you know, metaphorically speaking.

And then the cortex has these little vine-like tendrils going down to regulate the hypothalamus, you know? When push comes to shove, man, the hypothalamus— that thing wins! And so, you know, you get people now and then who have a hypothalamic dysfunction and one of them produces a condition called—I can't remember it, it's not dypsomania although it's like that, it doesn't matter, it produces uncontrollable thirst! And so what will happen is that people that have this hypothalamic problem will drown themselves by drinking water, which you can do by the way! And so they just cannot get enough water, and there is no stopping them, right? No more than there would be stopping you if you were suffering from raging thirst.

It’s like, it’s a happy day when the hypothalamus is not telling you what to do! And you know, you live in such a civilized state that most of the time, roughly speaking, you are tranquil and satisfied, and more or less you can imagine yourself as a peaceful, you know, productive, well-meaning entity. But don’t be thinking that. That’s just not true!

So, you know, lots of times soldiers develop post-traumatic stress disorder because they go out on the battlefield. They are kind of naive; they are young guys, you know? And it actually is worse if they are not that bright, it turns out, because having a lower IQ is one of the things that predisposes you to post-traumatic stress disorder. But anyways, they go out on the battlefield and they see what they are capable of under battlefield conditions.

And like, you know, we have been fighting wars for a very long time—millions of years, you know? Chimps basically have wars with other chimps, the troops, right? Because the juveniles will patrol the perimeter of their territory and if they find other chimps from other troops that they outnumber, they will tear them to pieces! Like, and chimps are really strong. And when I say they'll tear them to pieces, I mean that literally! You know? Hey, they tear them to pieces!

And Jane Goodall discovered that originally in the 1970s, she didn’t even report it for a while because she was so shocked. You know, she kind of assumed like most followers of Rousseau that the human proclivity for warfare was something that was uniquely human. You know? It had something to do with our unique self-consciousness or our intelligence or something like that. She had no idea that it was rooted that deeply. You know, we split from chimps about 6 to 7 million years ago or something like that.

And so, we were patrolling territory. We were gang members 7 million years ago! And, you know, that's a minimum estimation because, of course, that ancestor shaded back maybe 20 million years into entities that were roughly primate-like. And so, territoriality and the proclivity to defend territory is so deeply embedded in us. It’s like, the control center for our whole brain. And so, there isn’t anything more important to us, I would say, than maintaining the match between what we want to have happen and what other people are doing in response to our actions.

Like, that’s what we want! And as long as that match is maintained, then our emotional systems—and I would say that anxiety is probably primary in that regard—our emotional systems remain inhibited. They’re ready like a nuclear reactor rod, are on, and the rest of the brain dampens them down! But it's like, you don’t want them to take time to start up, man! You want them to be on at a tenth of a second’s notice when it’s necessary.

And so, you know, that's kind of why…well, if you look at a wild animal, it's like, it's alert. You know, it's ready to dart this way or that way, especially a prey animal instantaneously! And it has reflexes built into it, as you do, that will respond way before you are conscious. So, for example, if you happened to be walking down a trail and you detect something snake-like in the periphery, you will leap away before even know that you leapt! And that’s because it takes a fair bit of time to actually see a snake, by which I mean form a conscious representation of the snake, you know?

And maybe it takes a quarter of a second or something like that, or even longer, but it doesn’t matter. Maybe it takes a tenth, a twentieth of a second, a tenth of a second. But the thing about the damn snake is that it’s way faster than that! It’s really fast, that thing! And it co-evolved with primates, by the way, and so it can nail you way faster than you can look at it.

So, you have your eyes map snake-like objects right onto your reflexes so that the eyes go, the eyes make you jump, and then they see after that. Yeah, well now you can see, that’s no problem! So, alright, alright. Now what I would say is that we live in a shared story and the story is a way of looking at the world and it’s a way of acting in the world at the same time.

And that story has to operate within narrow parameters, and this is something that is extraordinarily important to understand because, and this is something I think that Piaget figured out—Jean Piaget figured out better than anyone else. I think that he really got this right, and by the way, one of the things that Piaget was trying to do—you never hear about how strange these great thinkers are. Piaget was a very strange guy and he was a hyper-genius. He was offered the curatorship of a bloody museum when he was 10 years old, you know, because he wrote this little paper on mollusks, which apparently was very good.

And so they offered him the curatorship of a museum, and his parents wrote back and said, "Well, you know, no, probably not because he is actually ten." And so, that was Piaget, man! The guy was a genius! And you know, he was actually motivated by the desire to reconcile science and religion. That was actually his entire motivation for what he did. You never hear that, but that is the case.

And so, Piaget was very interested in how you produce structures that enable you to regulate yourself because you are kind of like a colony of strange sub-animals that have to figure out how to get along so that you can sort of be one thing! You kind of learn that, I would say, between the ages of 2 and 4 as you are being socialized. You know how erratic two-year-olds are! I mean, they are a blast! And it’s part because they are erratic; it’s like they are unbelievably happy and then they are unbelievably hungry and then they are really hot and then they are really upset and crying, you know, and then they are really scared.

It’s like, and all of that's just untrammeled. So it’s really fun to be around them, especially when they are happy because they are just so happy that it’s just, you know, you don’t ever get to be that happy. And so, it’s nice to be around a two-year-old because you can kind of feel that again, you know. And a lot of, one of the horrible things about being a parent is that you spend a tremendous amount of your time making your child less happy.

And the reason for that is that positive emotion is very impulsive, you know, because everybody says, "Well you should be happy." It’s like, well, no! When you are happy, you are actually quite stupid! And so, because happiness makes you impulsive. Happiness makes, happiness says, "Hey, everything is really good right now, get what you can while the getting is good!"

And so, as a—like, if you are hyper-optimistic, manic, we’ll say—it’s like every stock investment looks like a really good stock investment. And it's like you go out and spend all your money because look it, there’s those wonderful things everywhere and you could do so great things with them! And then, you know, you spend all your money and then you crash and think, "Oh God, my life is over!" You know, because I just spent all my money on all this useless stuff and it’s all under the grip of impulsive positive emotion, you know.

And so, when you're telling your kids to be quiet and settle down, it isn’t because they're making a lot of noise being in pain; it’s because they are running around like wild baboons having a blast! And disrupting things like mad, you know. And so, well, kids have to settle down, you know, like, "Quit having so much fun!" And it's kind of awful that you do that but you do.

And that’s because the emotions and motivations have to be brought into like a relationship with one another within the person so that, you know, one thing I remember with my son, who was quite... he is quite disagreeable by temperament, which is actually a good thing as far as I am concerned, although it brings its own challenges. And so with my daughter, when she was misbehaving, she was pretty agreeable, and, you know, if she was misbehaving, I could basically just look at her and she would just quit! You know? But my son, it was like that was just nothing. You're looking at me, it’s like, "No, that's just not going to go anywhere, man!"

So then I would like, tell him to stop and that really wasn't having much of an effect either. He would just sort of maybe laugh or run away or whatever; he was a tough little rat! And you know, what I would do with him is that he would be doing something and I would interfere and he would get upset and, you know, angry. And so then I would get him to sit on the steps, and I told him, this was when he was about two, I said, "Look, you are going to sit on the steps, that's time out. You're going to sit on the steps until you've got control of yourself, and you can come back and play the family game again!"

I basically said, "Be a civilized human being and then you are welcome again." And so he would sit on the steps, it was so interesting to watch because he was just enraged! He would sit there like—have you ever seen a two-year-old have a temper tantrum? It’s really quite the bloody phenomenon! If you ever saw an adult do that, you would like—you would call 911 right away. It’s like, "Oh my God!"

And I have seen adults do that, you know, because people, say, with borderline personality disorder will have temper tantrums and it’s like, man, you want to be about 30 feet away from that person, that’s for sure! It’s really—but in kids, it’s like, well first of all they are only this long, so how much trouble can they really cause? But it's like, you know they're just completely gone.

They are like on the floor, their face is red; they are just furious! Like, way more furious than you ever get if you are even vaguely socialized! They are just outraged and they are kicking and hitting the ground! And like, it’s like a little epileptic fit of anger, you know, they are completely controlled by their rage.

And we took care of one kid for a while who he was actually a pushover. That kid, you could get him to behave by, you know, kind of shaking your finger at him. But, his mother thought he was really tough because he had her fooled. He had her figured out. And one of the things he would do is have temper tantrums, and during the temper tantrum, he would hold his bloody breath until he turned blue!

It's like try that! Like, you know, as—that's your homework! Go home and have a temper tantrum and while you are doing it hold your breath until you actually turn blue. It’s like, you won’t be able to do it! You don’t have the willpower of a two-year-old, that’s for sure! That little varmint, man, he would just have a fit, then he would hold his breath and then he would turn blue.

It was like, “Wow!” That’s, that’s amazing! And we would just let him do it, and you know he would turn blue and everybody would be gone and he would come out of it, you know? And it didn’t work, so he just quit doing it. I think he did it like twice, and then he figured out, "Oh well, that's a lot of work for very little outcome!" And you know, it’s not like two-year-olds are stupid; they’re not stupid!

But they are probably smarter than you, but they are not civilized by any stretch of the imagination! And so, anyways, back to my son. I would put him on the steps and he’d be like, "RRRRRR!" Just like enraged! And, and trying to get himself together, you know? And I’d wait a few—you know, I had a strict rule, which was as soon as you are done you’re welcome again.

So, it’s completely under your control! You can get yourself calmed down; you can come and talk to me again if you are calm enough so I like you, then you are welcome back in the family! No grudge, nothing. And so, it’s harder than you think! Like, people think that they like their kids. Like don’t be thinking that they are hard to like; they are little monsters! And they are very, very pushy and provocative; and so lots of their parents do not like their children and they do terrible things to them their whole life!

So, it’s no joke, and, you know, that was Freud's observation, fundamental observation, that a lot of psychopathology is rooted in the family. And you can be sure of that, you know? And when you hear about some mother who's done something terrible to her child—which happens reasonably frequently—you know perfectly well that she has a very terrible capacity to discipline! The child has just provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her and provoked her!

It just happens to be a day where her new boyfriend left and she is quite hungover and she got fired. And it’s like, that’s the wrong day to provoke her! And then she does something that is not good! And you read about it and you think, “Well how could that happen? How could anyone do that?” Well, that’s how they do it! And so, kids—they are very provocative, just like little chimps! Chimps will—the adolescents will throw little pebbles and sticks at the sleeping larger males and bug them and that teasing—which it is—that teasing turns into full-fledged dominance challenge behaviour once the adolescent males get big enough to do it.

And so when you are being provoked by a child—which they provoke you all the time—they are trying to figure out, "Well just, where are you exactly? What happens if I do this? What happens if I do this?" You know? And how else are they going to figure it out?

Anyways, he would sit on the steps and just, he is just enraged and trying to control himself and I would watch that and then, you know, I’d come back after about two minutes or whatever, and he would still be "RRRRRRR!" And I would say, well, you know, have you got yourself under control? Are you ready to get off the steps? And he would go, "NOOOO! NOT YET!"

And then, you know, he would get himself under control and then he would come back and you know, he’d be contrite, and then I would like him right away! You know you got to watch that, you know because you don’t like being dominated by a two-year-old! No one does!

And so if the child hasn’t mastered himself and started to act in accordance with the prevailing social norms, you won’t like them. Well, you think, "Yeah, I will because I am a good person." It’s like, "No, you won’t, and no, you are not a good person!" So don’t be thinking about that at all; it’s just not true!

So when he was contrite, then he’d come, and then, you know, we would just go on like nothing had happened! Because that is what you want to do, right? As soon as you get compliance, especially if the compliance is in the best interests of the child, you want to reward it instantly, right? That’s the right thing to do because so then—and you could just see him gaining control over himself.

And so what was really happening is that in his mind, in his brain, we’ll say, there was a war between the psyche, the ego that was starting to become integrated, you know, and starting to become a continuous person, an identity. And it is fragile in two-year-olds, and it can be disrupted all the time, and it is! That’s why they are so hyper-emotional; it’s fragile, that little ego and it doesn’t have a lot of power.

And so what you want to do is reward it when it wins! You know? When it—he gets control over the underlying motivations, you want to say, “Hey, good work, man! Good work, kid! You did it! You know, you got yourself under control! Way to be!” And the kid is really happy about that. Because it’s actually not that much fun to have a temper tantrum. It’s exhausting, you know? It takes you over.

[Question?] [Student] Could you give an example of what you would reward him with?

[JBP] Oh, just a pat on the head or, you know, "That’s good!" kind words, you know? Or whatever.

[Student] Notice it.

[JBP] Yeah, notice it! Pay attention! That’s it! That’s it! Pay attention! And that’s a great thing to know with people, like in your relationships. Here is the key to a good relationship. It’s not the only one, but watch your person carefully, carefully, carefully! And whenever they do something that you would like them to do more of, tell them that that was really good, and mean it. And it’s not manipulative because if it’s manipulative, it won’t work!

It’s like you have to say, “Wow! I am so glad you did that!” And you have to be precise. Here is what you just did that I thought was great! And then, “Oh boy, that’s so nice that you noticed! I can’t believe that you noticed!” It’s like, you know, you do that twenty times and the person will be like the rat that’s just pushing the lever for cocaine, you know?

So, but no, I’m serious! Skinner established this, B.F. Skinner noticed this a long time ago. Reward is intensely useful in terms of modifying behaviour, but the problem is that it’s really hard to notice when things are going right, right? Because you are kind of primed to notice when things are going wrong. And so you use threat and punishment more often as agents of shaping the people that you are around because, you know, when everything is going right what are you going to say?

Everything is going right, it turns to zero. You just assume it, and that’s not good! That’s not good! You want to pay attention! And if your person—your children, your wife, whoever—your mother, your sister, if you want them to—if you want to rectify your relationships with them, and I am not saying to do this in a manipulative way, it won’t work, but if they do something that’s promoting harmony and peace and goodwill, it’s like attend to it! Tell them that you noticed! It’s like so useful!

And you have to get rid of grudges and your resentment to do that, right? Because you don’t want to—you are kind of mad at your sister and then you know, she does something good—you think there is no goddamn way I am going to reward her for that! So you ignore her when she does something good! It’s like that’s brilliant, that is, because then you just punished her for doing what you want.

And people do that with their kids all the time! You know, because they let the kids dominate them, then they get resentful. Then the kid will run up to them to show them something that’s kind of spectacular and they’re not happy; they’ll like, “Oh yeah, that’s, I’m working.” You know, little kids all sad about that! And he has just learned something! And it’s not perhaps what you want him to learn.

And so you have to keep your relationship with your children pristine, and that means that you can't hold a grudge or resent them. And that means that you have to help them learn how to behave so that you like them. And that way, if you like them and you are kind of sensible, and maybe your partner also likes them, so, you know, you have got a consensus going there. There is a reasonable possibility that other people will actually like them too, including other children! And then the world opens up to them!

You know, then you'll bring them to people's houses and the people will actually smile at them and give them a pat on the head instead of thinking, "Oh my God, that brat's coming to visit again! I wonder what he will break this time!" You know? And that's just a horrible thing for your child to experience repetitively in situation after situation.

All they learn is that adults have a false smile but they are really lying all the time! God! It's like a bit of hell, and there’s a lot of children who are trapped in that! It’s really awful to see! I can see kids like that when I walk down the street, you know? It’s like they are little doomed things and they’re... they are, you know, they are screwed in 15 different ways and there is no way out of it. It’s really awful!

So, I would not recommend that you do that! It’s better to notice that you are a bit of a monster or a lot of a monster and notice that you are much happier with the people around you when they behave in accordance with reasonable social norms, and then you actually feel genuinely connected to them. You want to work on their behalf so that everything works out!

But if you think that you are a good person and that you would never do anything that was harmful to your children, then you can just forget about that! Because you will never take it seriously enough to actually learn! So, alright! So anyways, we live inside this story as far as I can tell, and you know, we kind of put the story together inside us to begin with and that happens between 2 and 4 when you are integrating those motivations and emotions into a relatively functional unity, right?

And that does happen between 2 and 4! If you don't have your kids socialized by the time they are 4, you might as well just forget it! And I know that sounds terribly pessimistic and all of that, but I know the literature on trying to rectify antisocial behaviour in children, and after the age of 4 it’s virtually impossible, no matter what you do! And the reason for that is that kids who are still acting like two-year-olds when they are four, you know, they are twice as old! Eh, as a two-year-old! That’s a lot of difference! Like a four-year-old is an adult as far as a two-year-old is concerned!

And so if the four-year-old is still acting like a two-year-old, that’s really not good! And other four-year-olds will come up and, you know, do a little play invitation, like a dog, and you know, the kid—the two-year-old four-year-old has no idea how to react to that! And so the more mature kid thinks, "Oh, well.. how about I play with you?" [motions to another student] And then that kid is isolated from the peers. And after four you are mostly socialized by your peers, and so you just fall farther and farther and farther behind.

You are more and more alienated, you are more bitter and angry, and no wonder! And it’s just not—you can’t rectify it! So, so, so that’s useful to know; it’s like your job from two to four is to turn your child, help turn your child into a functional unity. And by three they should be functional enough as a unity within themselves so that they can concentrate on a voluntary goal for some reasonable length of time, which is also why it’s useful to let them spend some time alone so that they can learn to amuse themselves.

Because if they can't amuse themselves they are not going to play with other kids! And then by three they are sorted together enough that if another three-year-old comes along, they can at least play in parallel and may also start, maybe able to start playing a cooperative game. And so that’s often a fantasy game, you know, pretend.

And so what the kids will do, sometimes they mediate it verbally, but sometimes it's more acted out; it's a combination of the two. They will assign each other roles. They will do this with you too. Well, let’s have a tea party! Well, what does that mean? Well, it means let’s sit down and act out the act of sharing food and see if we can get that right. That’s what the kid is saying; we will have a little tea party, you know?

It’s very important because human beings share food! Like this is a major thing to get right, man! And so, the kid will say, well you be the Mom and I will be the Dad, and you know, we will make a little fort and that will be our house and we will go in there and run our roles! And you know, we are acting out—we are acting out family! And if we are both reasonably civilized as three-year-olds, we can concentrate on that goal; we can establish that little fictional world, we can negotiate a mutual goal, and then we can run the simulation!

And that is what kids are doing when they are pretending. It’s bloody brilliant! That’s play man! It’s like it’s brilliant! It’s absolutely unbelievable because, you know, if you are going to play Mom, let’s say, it isn’t like you—it isn’t exactly like you imitate your Mom because imitation would be—you know how annoying it is when someone copies you? So, you know, you are sitting like that and then—and I do the same thing—that’s really annoying!

And that isn't what kids do. They don’t act out the precise actions that they have seen the target of their fantasy display; they're way more sophisticated than that! They watch their mother, let's say, like hawks and then they start to extract out the regularities in their behaviour, which is Mom behaviour, let’s say—that’s what makes you Mom, whatever that is.

And then, so it’s like they look at you across time and they extract out the regularity that makes you Mother and then they try to embody that regularity in their pretend play! And then they sort of encapsulate or incorporate the spirit of being a mother or being a father or whatever or an animal because they’ll play at that. And so that is what they are doing; they are using their body and their mind as dramatic forums.

It’s really amazing, you know? It’s so sophisticated and no other animal does that, as far as we know. And it’s the platform on which language is based, first of all. We imitate and language is imitation, right? Because we use the same words, right? So it’s imitation, it’s a big deal. So you can act out someone else and then you can conceptualize them in fantasy, and it is only way after that that you could maybe articulate it!

What does it mean to be a mother? So I could have you write an essay about that? Well, you would have to think about it, right? You wouldn’t just automatically know! But if someone hands you a baby, you know, you are not completely socially blind! You roughly know what to do after you are done with your initial nervousness! You roughly know what to do! Don’t drop it, that’s a good rule!

You have probably figured that one out at least, you know? Don’t yell at it! Don’t startle it! Give it a little pat maybe! Try hugging it! Maybe you go like this! You know, you make eyes at it, you know what to do! It’s built into you, you know, it’s built into you! But that doesn’t mean you could lay it out as a series of rules about how to be a mother! It’s like you could—write a whole damn book about that!

So, alright! So anyways, you live in this story and first of all you get your own story together and that’s by integrating your motivations and emotions together under social influence. You know, Piaget kind of states that before the age of three, kids can’t really play—they are egocentric. And it’s not exactly right because you are actually playing with your mother from the time you are born! So even with breastfeeding, that’s a social interaction and it’s a complex cooperative endeavour!

And it’s often hard for a mother and the infant to get that right because it’s complicated and it requires a lot of social interaction. Like the child has to learn not to bite, for example, you know? And a mother has to learn not to be too nervous, and there is a lot of social bonding—it’s a really complicated social interaction. So the child, the infant even at the earliest stages is already engaged in a complex social dynamic that is essentially play-oriented, but it’s pretty primordial.

It has to do mostly with the mouth and a child's mouth and tongue are already hardwired at birth. So your child is almost all mouth and tongue when it’s born! The rest of its body, well, you watch infants, it's like even when they are how old? Seven months? Six months? Four months? I can't even remember now. You know, they will move their arm and they kind of go like this; it's like they have no fine control. They more like they have clubs on the ends of sticks—it’s like their nervous system isn’t thoroughly myelinated; they don’t have control over themselves! But their mouth and tongue are already wired up, and so otherwise they wouldn’t be able to swallow or nurse!

So the oral element is extraordinarily important for a young child; that’s why kids put everything in their mouth! You know, even when they are a bit older! It’s like they see with their tongue, which of course everyone can do! You know, if you put a block in your mouth you can tell that it’s a cube! You can tell that it is a cube without looking! So you can with your tongue, you can see with your hands, you can even see, to some degree with your ears!

Anyways, so they’re a social interaction right from the beginning, but for the point of simplification you might say well first the child organizes themselves into a functional unity under the pressure of social dynamics and then they get unified enough so that they can attain unity with another child by setting up a fictional world and cooperating and competing within that. Because that’s quite interesting too because, you know, people often juxtapose cooperation and competition as if they are opposites. But they are not opposites at all! Another Piagetian observation!

So you say, “Well, is hockey a competitive game?” and people would say, “Well, yeah!” But then you think, really! Really! No one brings a basketball! Right? So, we are going to play by the rules. That's cooperation! Well are teams competing against each other? Well, yes! But they agreed to compete within a particular landscape and they all cooperate to maintain that landscape!

And so you do the same thing when you are playing Monopoly! It’s like you are trying to win, but at the same time you are cooperating! That’s society, man! That’s society right there! You are cooperating! That’s the big enclosure, and within that there are regulated competitions! But to separate those artificially and say one is competition and the other is cooperation is just not very smart! It’s not observant! That’s not how it works!

And games are intensely cooperative, even if they are intensely competitive. I mean the hockey teams are playing in the same game, that’s the cooperation. Then each team—there is competition within the team to be the best player, let’s say. But everyone wants that because everyone wants good players to emerge! But still cooperate like mad with your teammates and if you don’t pass and, you know, play like a reasonable person then, they’re going to not be happy with you!

And so even within that competition, cooperation is regulating the interactions and then you can think. This is a really good thing to think too. It’s like people often say to their kids, “Doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” And the kid of course has no idea what that means! It’s like, what do you mean? I am trying to win! And the parent says, “No, no! It matters how you play!”

And the kid pushes them, and the parents really can’t come up with a good explanation of why that is the case. They might say, “Well other kids won’t play with you!” There you go! Because you could say, this is something to think about. So there is a game and there is a victory within the game but then there is the set of all games and there is victory across the set of all games.

And the victory that you attain across the set of all games isn’t winning all the games; it’s being invited to play all the games! And so if you play fair, then you are playing a meta-game! And the meta-game is how to win across the set of all games! And so if you teach your child how to behave properly, then they always get invited to play, and that makes them winners—and that’s that!

And so, if you understand that, you understand something phenomenally important about the emergence of morality! You know, because people—moral relativists in particular—think that morality is relative! And of course human beings are diverse, just like languages are diverse, and there is more than one playable game. But there is not really more than one playable meta-game!

It’s like you are either the kind of person that other people want to play with or you are not! And if you are not the kind of person that people want to play with, then you are a loser! It’s as simple as that! And that’s true of all cultures! They might be playing different individual games within their culture, and undoubtedly they are! But the set of all games that they play is still common across cultures. That’s part of what makes us human!

And then you could say as well, we are actually evolved to detect people who are good at playing the set of all possible games! And we actually know that; that's not theoretical! We know for example, some things are easy to remember and some things are hard to remember! You know? Here is something that is easy to remember: you play with someone and they cheat! Man, you will remember that! That’s like in your mind; that's not going anywhere!

And so great are detecting cheaters! And you remember! And that’s because you can’t trust a cheater! And you shouldn’t invite a cheater to play a game with you because they might cheat! And so, that’s part of the innate morality system! You remember cheaters because they are good at playing the meta-game! And of course, you’re evolved! Of course, you are adapted to the meta-game because you are the product of this immense evolutionary history, right?

And whoever your ancestors were—which is an unbroken string of successful reproducers going back 3.5 billion years—it’s mind boggling! Your chances against that are so—it's billions to one—and here you are! It's like, but you know, you are still only going to last about 80 years, so...but that, you know, is still, you know, good for you!

So anyways, there were lots of games that your ancestors were playing across that immense span of time. Many, many, you know, lizard games and tree dweller games and crustacean games, you know, the huge set of games. And you are adapted to win across those games—all of them! And that’s built into you, man. That’s your central human nature! That’s what makes you social!

And it’s not some mere cultural construct, quite the contrary! It’s so deeply embedded in you; it’s what you are! Alright, so well this is a story! It’s a game too! That’s another way of thinking about it! You know, it’s like a Monopoly game! Well, what’s the frame? Well that’s the rules of the game! And are they—why do you accept them?

Well, it's kind of arbitrary, right? It’s like, that happens to be the rules. Hockey has different rules; basketball has different rules. But what they share is that they have rules, OK? So there is a frame—that’s the rules! And then within the frame there is a goal! And the goal is whatever the rules dictate! You know, there is usually—it’s usually the construction of a hierarchy of success within a frame!

And so, that’s what you play. And so you play Monopoly, and it’s like, we’ll accept the rules! That’s the social contract! And then we will each try to win and that will be fun! We find that amusing! And if you lose, what do you say? Well, you say there is always another game! And so that’s great!

So if you have that attitude and you play fair, then it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose although you still want to try to win because otherwise you are not a good player! But you accept defeat gracefully because you can play again! And so—and you will win some and you will lose some and that’s not so bad, you know? And even if you lose, well maybe you learned something!

And you’re doing a lot more than one thing while you are playing Monopoly, you know? You are having a conversation and learning how to interact with people! And learning how to regulate your emotions! And so even if you lose, if you have any sense, you win! And if your kids have any sense, they know that! And so that way you buffer them against defeat! It’s like, yeah, yeah, you know, next time! It’s OK! You should try, but it is OK! And that’s useful information for people to know!

So, alright! So you are always in one of these little frameworks and there is just no getting out of it! So, and that’s because, you know, at any given moment this is like field theory. There used to be psychological theories that talked about the field of human experience, something like that. And this is kind of what that is; this is a field!

And basically what happens is that you parse out a little part of the world, say, and an amount that you can handle. So let's say it has some duration! You are not aiming at something 50 years in the future; it’s because how the hell are you going to do that? There are too many variables, you know! So, you are aiming at some handleable amount of time and you posit a goal in there and you plot your route!

And then, that tells you what is up and tells you what is down! Because up moves you towards the goal and down moves you away from the goal! And that sets up your motivation framework so that you have something worth attaining! You know, that’s a really interesting thing to know too. It’s like, why have a goal? Well it's easy! No goal, no positive emotion!

Because you experience positive emotion by noticing that you are moving towards a goal. And so if you don't have a goal, well, you can’t have any positive emotion! So you better have a goal! And so, you might say, well, what should the goal be? Well, we could start by saying, well, any goal is better than none!

And then we might say, well it should be a goal that other people will let you pursue because otherwise it’s going to be kind of difficult; and maybe they will be even happy to help you pursue it—that would even be better! And maybe it’s a goal that would enable you to learn how to pursue other goals while you pursue that goal—boy, that would really be good!

And so you can see that your goal was parameterized, but that doesn't mean that any old goal works. It means there are some goals that work nicely and some not so nicely. There are playable games and non-playable games—that’s a good way of thinking about it!

And you want to have a playable game, and there’s a lot of them—lawyer, plumber, you know, actor, whatever—they are playable games! And it’s not obvious which one is better, but it’s certainly obvious which ones are sustainable and which ones are worse! And so there is a set of playable games, and you need to extract from that set of playable games a game that suits you!

And that would be partly due to your temperament, you know? Because extroverted people want to play an extroverted game; highly neurotic people want to play a safe game; agreeable people want to play a generous game; and disagreeable people want to play a game that is highly competitive so they can win! And you know, fine!

But they are all within the realm of playable games! And that means they are socially acceptable as well! And so, that means it isn’t just arbitrary; it isn’t just relative what you decide to do! It is heavily parameterized! There is a set of playable games, and it’s large! The set is large but there are commonalities within it!

And that’s why there are commonalities; that is why morality has a common basis fundamentally! And so that’s partly what we are trying to investigate. It’s like, what’s up? What does it mean? Is there such a thing? Now, one thing to remember is that if you don’t erect a hierarchical structure with something to aim at, you got no positive motivation! Because you experience positive motivation in relationship to a goal, not from attaining the goal—that's satisfaction!

Besides, it’s fleeting! You know perfectly well, you graduate from university, poof! The next day you have a problem, which is what do you do next? And that’s a tough problem! It’s not like you solved your problems by winning that game; you just introduced the problem of having to introduce another game! So it’s unreliable as a source of positive emotion. But what’s reliable is you set a goal and you try to attain it!

And then that gives your life, literally provides your life with meaning! That’s what meaning is! Now it’s more than that, but that’s what it is! And so then you might ask yourself, well, what’s a really good goal? Well, that’s what we are trying to figure out! What’s a really good goal? And now, OK, so you got that!

So now I am going to walk through, at least partly through—we will see how far we get—I am going to walk through Pinocchio with you because that is what the movie is about! And it’s hard to say how it come about, like it was written, the story, by a guy named Collodi, [spells it] it’s quite a bit different, the story, that story, the written one from the Disney version. The Disney version was a product of the collaboration of geniuses of animation, essentially. So they were artistic geniuses, great at capturing motion and emotion and all of that! They were stellar at that and imaginative, tremendously imaginative, but collectively imaginative!

And so they put together a collective product and you might say, well how did they do that exactly? It’s like, well they were good storytellers! And what does that mean? Well, it means you know the story that works and the story that doesn’t! And maybe partly what you do is you kind of think out a story and you think, well, what if this happened? Well, maybe this should happen? Oh! That’s the thing! That would work! It’s like a little flash of inspiration, right? It’s like you got a piece of the puzzle that fits!

You think, that will work there! And then you talk to the other people and you generate ideas and someone says, what if? What if they do this? And then everyone goes, no, no that’s just not believable! No one's going to buy that! And someone else has a little revelation; they say, well, you know, it makes some sense somehow if they do this! And then everybody goes, oh yeah! That really, that really works!

It’s like, why? Why? Why? Well, you don’t know! You don’t know why it works, but it works because it works! Because it’s the right story! And so what does that mean? Well it’s kind of associated with this meta-game idea! You know, there is a story that you should be acting out that works across games and you have an inkling of it! You have a notion of it! You have a vague apprehension of it! It’s sort of built into you—that’s an archetype!

That’s an archetype! And so when you read a story that works, you are just entranced by it! And you all know that! You go to a movie and it’s a great movie and you are just blown away! You know, it’s a movie that can pull you in and turn you into one of the screen characters and like, run you through a huge set of emotions! I saw this movie once about South America; it started with this guy running out of a subway, naked, and he didn’t know where he was!

And it turned out that he had been absconded by the totalitarian death squads and he couldn’t remember anything about himself! And he went back to his village, and basically what happened was that he ended up back in the totalitarian death grip! And it showed how the fascist state had saturated the village completely! And so it was a tragedy, and you could see with every action that this amnestic guy as he recreated himself and remembered his identity was going to travel down exactly the same road because nothing had changed!

And by the time—I wish, I have looked what that movie was for years! I’ve never been able to find it again, but when the movie was over, every single person in the theater was crying! And not just a little bit; they were just out of it! It was a brilliant, terrifying movie! And that meant there was something right about it, man! And it got people! And you might say, you know, you have dim apprehensions about the world, and some of those are instinctual and some of those are a consequence of your experience.

It’s like the pieces are fragmented, but if you get away from them—a long ways—you can see how they fit together! But they are fragmented! And then you go see a story, and those pieces go click, click, click, click! And then you think, wow! That’s what—that’s how that works out! That’s what that means! And that produces that overwhelming emotion! And that’s partly how you make yourself transparent to yourself—you go and experience a story, and watch a story, and you tell a story, and you start to find out who you are by doing that!

My nephew had a dream at one point; someone made a little animated thing out of it and put it on the Internet, which is quite cool! So anyways, he was having night terrors and he ran around like a little knight, you know—k-n-i-g-h-t, knight—and he had a little, you know, armor and a sword and he would run around the house with a little knight hat on, being a knight! And he was only like four or something, and he had watched a lot of Disney movies—a lot of movies—so he kind of got the knight idea! It was... he was acting that out, and he was having terrors at night, right? And so he would go to bed with his little knight hat and his sword and he would put them on his bed!

And then at night he would wake up screaming! And that happened for a very long time! And so when I went to visit, you know, I found out that this was happening and he had night terrors. So the kid wakes up with night terrors screaming, but can’t remember anything, generally speaking! So anyways, this was happening, and so it happened one day and I was sitting with him and his family at the breakfast table and I said, “Did you have a dream?” And he said, “Oh yes, I had a dream!” I said, “Well what was your dream?” And he said, “Well I was out in this field, I was surrounded by the dwarves and they came up to my knees and they were—they didn’t have any arms, they had big feet, and they were covered with hair and there was a cross shaved at the top of their heads and they were all greasy and they had huge beaks and everywhere I went they jumped at me with their beaks, and there were lots of them!”

And everybody was very quiet after he said this because it was like, oh, that’s why you were screaming at night! It’s like, yeah, OK! And so then he said, “But at the background there was a dragon, and the dragon would blow out smoke and fire and then it would turn into these dwarves!” So it’s like, man, that kid had a problem, right? It was like, well, what are you going to do? Fight off a dwarf? Who cares! Puff! Ten more!

That’s life, man! That’s life! Really! That’s the Hydra—you cut off one head and seven more grow! That’s life! Snakes everywhere! And you get rid of one and there will be more! And so, he figured that out! It’s a hell of an existential shock when you are four! And so, he’s like, he is a knight. He’s thinking, what do I do about these dwarves? Well, there are too many of them, but there is a dragon! Well, so I said, “Well, what could you do about that?” Right? Loaded question! It implies that you could do something about that!

Well, he kind of knew that! Which he was running around like a knight! And he kind of figured that out! And he said, “Well, I’ll get my dad and I jump up on the dragon and I poke out both of his eyes with my sword! And then I go right down its stomach to the place where the fire came out, the firebox! And then I’d carve a piece of the firebox out and make a shield! And that would be the end of that!”

And I thought, wow! Good work, kid! Like you really got it, right? It's the central human story! There's the terrible unknown, right? Fire breathing, generating trouble. And what do you do? You confront that! You confront that! And by confronting it, you get stronger—that’s the shield! And that’s what a human being is! And that’s right! It’s exactly right!

And that was the end of his night terrors, by the way—which seems too good to be true, but it is actually true because I followed up with his mother for a long time, and that was that! He catalyzed that part of his identity—he adopted the role of the mythological hero! And that’s what he needed to do! Because, like there was a dragon and a bunch of dwarves! Like what the hell are you going to do about that? Run? That’s not going to help!

You know, if you run in a dream like that, the dwarves multiply and they get bigger and you get smaller as you run! It’s like that’s not a good solution and people do that in their life all the time! And so the dwarves get bigger until they are giants and they get smaller until there is nothing left of them! And then there is no recovery—that is not good!

Now, OK! So now I also proposed to you that there is a symbolic structure to the world! It’s a meta-structure, I would say! I think these categories are truly real and they’re basically this! There’s unexplored territory and explored territory and there is you! And unexplored territory is the source of great riches and probably will kill you! And explored territory is your culture!

And it crunches you into submission and conformity and turns you into a civilized being! And you are stuck with both of those! And then there is you! You know, you are kind of admirable and cool and you do a lot of decent, wonderful, amazing things! And there are things about you that are just horrible! And you know about them! And you are stuck with them! And that’s the world! And that’s the landscape of the world!

And what you will see if you pay attention is that people who are ideologues, like Rousseau or say, like Hobbes, but it doesn’t matter, ideologues will tell you part of that story. So environmentalists, for example, will say nature—that's pristine beauty, natural harmony, French landscape. It’s a paradise! Especially if there are no people, it’s a paradise! And then culture is a rapacious monster! And human beings driving that culture against nature are monsters of a sort that perhaps there should be fewer of them!

It’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s all true! It’s exactly dead on! Right on, exactly right! Was that movie called Avatar? Yes, that’s James Cameron’s movie, right? That’s that story, yeah! And hey, it’s a good story! It’s even a mythological story! But it is only half the story!

The other story, you could think about it as a frontier myth—that’s Star Trek or Star Wars for that matter! Mostly Star Trek! It’s like, well, there is a wild savage landscape out there that can be conquered by and settled and stabilized by civilization! And it will be the heroic pioneer who does it! It’s exactly the opposite story of the environmentalist story, which is why I think that the environmental story emerged!

It was, you know, the frontier story had a lack in it—it missed half of the world! And so the other story had to come up! And it did! And if you take both of those stories, even though they are exactly the opposite to one another, if you know both of those stories, then you know the whole story! And it’s really weird, you know, because one of the propositions of formal logic is—it’s a fundamental proposition—is that something can’t be itself and its opposite at the same time!

It’s like, that’s true for some sorts of things—it’s true for logical claims! But it is completely wrong in this particular situation! Because things are what they are and their opposites at the same time! And that makes it very, very difficult to—that’s why a dragon hoards gold! It’s like, what’s up with that? Well it will eat you! And it will—but it has gold! So what do you do about that?

Because it’s paradoxical demands? Well, what you want to do is face the dragon and get the damn gold! That’s what you want to do! Well you have to be a paradoxical being even to do that! So, in "The Hobbit," for example, when—what's his name? Frodo, right? It's not, it's Bilbo in "The Hobbit."

You know, he is kind of this little underdeveloped, overprotected Shire dweller, and he is called on a great adventure to go and find the dragon! And he has to become a thief in order to manage it! Well that’s pretty weird, you know! It’s like, it’s because as a good citizen he is just not enough to conquer a dragon! He also has to become a bad citizen, in some sense! He has to incorporate the part of himself that is monstrous let’s say and develop that and hone it!

And that’s to say that, if you are harmless, you are not virtuous! You are just harmless! You are like a rabbit! A rabbit isn’t virtuous! It just can’t do anything except get eaten! It’s not virtuous! If you are a monster and you don’t act monstrously, then you are virtuous! But you also have to be a monster!

Well you see this all the time; Harry Potter is like that too. It’s like, he is flawed! He’s hurt! He has evil in him! He can talk to snakes, man! He breaks rules all the time! He is not obedient at all! But, you know, he has a good reason for breaking the rules and if he couldn’t break the rules, him and his little clique of rule-breaking troublemakers—if they didn’t break the rules they wouldn’t attain the highest goal! So it is very peculiar, but it’s a very, very, very common mythological notion!

You know, the hero has to be a monster, but a controlled monster! Batman is like that, you know? I mean, it’s everywhere! It’s the story you always hear! [Student] Is this where morals become ethics?

[JBP] Meaning? You have to be more precise. [Student] I feel like, because everyone is moral, but, in order to become ethics, you have to refine the morals; you have to kind of go into....

[JBP] Well, that's a good question, you know? Because one question is, you know, you are kind of implicitly moral in so far as you are socialized, but that is sort of procedural. It’s just built into you! This is different! This is also becoming conscious of it and expanding out your personality into dimensions that it wouldn't normally occupy! So this happens to people all the time!

So, for example, lots of my clients, my clinical clients are too agreeable and they are generally women, because women are more agreeable than men. But not always, because I have had agreeable men as clients as well. And what happens is they’re resentful and they don’t know how to stand up for themselves! And it’s because they are very compassionate by nature.

And so, if you enter into a negotiation with them, they will let you win! Well that’s not so good! Because you need to win too! Especially if you are in an organization of adults where there is a struggle right! When you have kids you can let them win, especially infants. Like, you have to let them win! And that’s partly why compassion is so necessary!

But as a basis for negotiation between adults, it’s like, sorry